The real genius behind "King Tut: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" which opened Tuesday at the Art Gallery of Ontario is to bring the Boy King back to the roots that really matter: to Steve Martin's breakthrough performance of King Tut on NBC's Saturday Night Live on April 22, 1978.

Martin insisted the skit look glittery and feel absolutely over-the top. The AGO –taking its cues from exhibition organizer, Arts and Exhibitions International – has taken Martin's point to heart. Their Tut show is over-the-top to a golden T.

Call this the Las Vegas branch of Egyptology, from the size of the crowds expected – almost 60,000 tickets sold to date – to the increased security driving AGO staff bananas, to the introductory three-screen video featuring Harrison Ford in full Indiana Jones mode celebrating the pharaohs as if they were the Bush family dynasty.

"This is their story," Ford intones in his best up-from-the-tomb voice. His wake-up call is followed on cue by the opening of a pair of inner-sanctum doors leading to the first chamber alive with reminders of Tut's dead predecessors and a display of the first of the exhibition's 100 or so artifacts.

The show business vibe accelerates further with Zahi Hawass, the controversial Cairo archaeologist, appearing on a video loop about halfway through the show outlining an important dig. (Hawass also figures prominently in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, which has been travelling since 2005.) To a number of scholars, Hawass is the Don Cherry of Egyptology, way too brash and media-ready to their liking.

There's even a genuine showstopper before any visitor gets a first glance at the star Boy King himself. Four gaunt printed images, looming over various chosen artifacts, lead the way to the exhibition "burial chamber." The images' pursed, thin lips and sunken cheeks are Tut's. They also suggest Michael Jackson, who'll be the subject of a future AEI touring show following its recent agreement with the Jackson estate.

Could this be the start of the next Las Vegas Rat Pack on tour? The mind boggles at the possibilities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first real ka-ching moment comes outside the AGO itself, where the gold glinting statue of the god Anubis stares impassively over the intersection of Dundas and McCaul Sts., a compelling installation worth its place outside the famed Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas with its own King Tut Museum.

"The Golden King" even has that time-proven, Las Vegas-worthy extra special narrative to it. It's a comeback, perhaps the greatest this town has seen since Frank Sinatra – Vegas's first $100,000-a-week star – played Maple Leaf Gardens on May 10, 1975. Tut's first go-around, "Treasures of Tutankhamun," attracted some 750,000 people in the fall-winter of 1979.

"I was at that show years ago," Helen Jenkins, a retired graphic designer, told me Tuesday while waiting to go in. "What's interesting now is that they've added all the pharaohs to the exhibition. For me, it's about the art. I went to OCA (now the Ontario College of Art & Design). Anyone looking at that death mask of King Tut's has to say it's art."

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